TCR Volume 3 Number 12 by The CenSEI Report

The prospect of financial sector deleveraging in China increases the risk of a hard landing. Although the probability … is still low, it’s not low enough to make hedging costs irrelevant. ~ Morgan Stanley investment bank commentary on July 10

Strategic Analysis and Research by the Center for Strategy, enterpriSe & intelligenCe

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In Japan, growth will average 2 percent … The stronger forecast for 2013 than previously projected reflects the effects of recent accommodative policies on confidence and private demand.

Report

~ International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook Update, July 9

Volume 3 • Number 12

July 15 - 28, 2013

Special Report on Disruptive Technologies Part One

HOW WE LIVE Mobile Internet, Cloud Technology, and the Internet of Things

HOW WE CONNECT Everybody Will Be Connected to the Internet Using a Variety of Devices • The coming of the Industrial Internet. An industrial giant looks to connect machines to analytic and communications technology, promising cost savings and efficiency across a number of industries

POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue

HOW WE TRAVEL

Self-Driving Vehicles Powered by Emission-Free Power Cells — and Pilotless Planes, Too • Charge while you drive. Engineers hope to both promote driverless cars and solve the charge anxiety related to electric cars by making wireless charging highways • Up next: pilotless aircraft? With talk of the advent of driverless cars, a prominent business publication finds its readers thinking that pilotless airplanes may come even sooner • Let’s not forget about trains. As it turns out, there are already driverless trains, in varying degrees

HOW WE POWER UP

Alternative Energy and Storage Technologies Could Keep the Lights On Without Overheating Earth • Who’s emitting greenhouse gases? A quick and dirty guide • Improved energy storage isn’t just about better batteries. Storing energy for later distribution can also have benefits for electric-grid management and resource usage POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue

04 perspective

28 wow tech

gotta 12 you see this

hot 38 what’s what’s cool

20 supergraphic

39 body lab

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perspective

A Future Divined — With a Little Help from Our Friends Divining the future of everyday life in the coming decades of dizzyingly rapid change is never easy. Especially with disruptive technologies radically recasting traditional and even cutting-edge ways of living life, doing work, shaping thoughts, making connections, and a host of other core human activities. You ain’t seen nothing yet — that’s for sure. Or even imagined about how life will change. What makes the formidable challenge of researching and anticipating the shape of life to come a little less daunting is a little help from some techie friends. One is the 21st-century researcher’s indispensable Swiss Army knife: online search engines. Indeed, without the breath-taking rapidity of algorithms sifting through millions of materials online in nanoseconds, The CenSEI Report would be a quarterly or half-yearly publication, instead of a fortnightly. The eight major articles in this issue and the next discuss technology’s impending impact on how we live and work, think and connect, travel and trade, get well and power up. Even more than usual, the stories are packed with The CenSEI Report’s online references and links, from the seminal McKinsey & Co. study on disruptive technologies and their impact on business, to the Asian Development Bank’s 2013 report highlighting the region’s burgeoning energy needs and what must be done to keep the lights on, the appliances working, the factories humming, and the connections, well, connected. If some of the information and insights cited and linked seem to be at odds with one another, that’s an indispensable part of how The CenSEI Report analyses and researches every subject. Nearly every issue is never cut and dried, black and white — most especially the hazy directions of life in the future. Technology and how humanity uses it will always have good and bad results, and we must reflect that in our articles. For that full and unbiased perspective, we thank our online friends and their inevitable discord and dissonances on the big questions tackled by The CenSEI Report. In its ﬁrst installment, the Special Report covers the impact of future tech on very basic aspects of everyday life: living at home, connecting with others, moving about, and harnessing light, heat and power. Most people would probably race to see the gadgetry in the kitchens and bathrooms, in cellphones and tablets, and on the road and the runway. But really, little of them would be running if not for the abundance, availability, and affordability of energy. The second and ﬁnal part of the disruptive technologies report will cover more complex aspects of human affairs: thinking and learning, manufacturing, and medicine, with an eighth article on how all the preceding seven would change the way we do business. So buckle up for the dazzling ride to tomorrow, free to debate every turn with the drivers. Editors’ Note: Due to late publication, issue date is adjusted to July 15-28, 2013. Subscription periods will be extended accordingly.

Go signal for same-sex marriage in California, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court On June 26, the United States’ Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as unconstitutional, and let stand a California lower court ruling allowing samesex couples to marry in apparent challenge to California’s Proposition 8 initiative, which banned same-sex marriage, effectively allowing same-sex marriages in that state, per a New York Times report.

California officials declined to appeal the lower court ruling against them but the proponents of Proposition 8 were not entitled to appeal the decision on behalf of the state, which lets stand the challenge to Proposition 8 pending further legal action. The rulings drew an assortment of reactions from various sources:

According to the report, the unconstitutionality of DOMA refers primarily to its failure to extend equal protection under the law to same-sex couples as it does to heterosexual “Today’s ruling couples, not to the constitutionality opens the door for of same-sex marriages per se, inevitable intolerance so the ruling doesn’t affect towards people of faith existing state laws banning who repudiate bigotry, defend same-sex marriages. At the the image of God in all human same time, the Supreme beings and also believe that Court declined to hear the marriage is a sacred union defined case of the California lower by Him.” court ruling, saying that

“(M)arriage was created by the hand of God. No man,

not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted.” – Rep. Michele Bachmann, Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, as quoted in POLITICO on June 26.

– Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, California pastor and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, as quoted in The Christian Post on June 27.

“ … Jesus

himself only said one thing about marriage, which is that you can’t divorce

… And we live in a country were countless people are divorced and that doesn’t seem to threaten the religious liberty of Catholics, and it’s as fundamental an issue … So if

Catholics can live with religious liberty with divorced people, they should be “If DOMA is perfectly able to live with gay people, unconstitutional, that I mean, as married, as a civil means the Constitution marriage.” is gay. ...Of course, no real shocker. It was written by a – Gay commentator Andrew bunch of dudes in wigs and Sullivan, as quoted in The tights in the city of brotherly Raw Story on June 30. love.” – Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, as quoted in The Hollywood Reporter on June 26.

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• July 15-28, 2013

HOW WE LIVE

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Toasters, Roasters, Showers, Shavers — All Gadgets Come Together in the Internet of Things

A - Refrigerator that tells you what you are out of B - Robot vacuum cleaner controllable by smartphone C - Light bulb and blinds controllable by smartphone D - Alarm clock that tells the coffee maker to make coffee when you switch off the alarm E - Smartphone and TV that control various appliances F - Doors that can be opened using smartphone as keys, with WiFi-enabled video doorbell G - Temperature and lighting control via smartphones H - Garden sensor waters your plants remotely via smartphone control I - Pet feeder feeds pets even when you are away via smartphone control J - Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush K - High-tech toilet seat that greets you “hello” and plays your favorite song

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STRATEGY POINTS

Devices get connected, and mobile apps will allow us to access and control them

A report predicts there will be 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015, 50 billion by 2020

More apps are helping people monitor their health and control remote devices from their smartphones and tablets

By Pia Rufino

Long development periods and adoption of 4G connectivity are barriers to machine-to-machine technology growth, says experts

t’s Sunday, and it’s your turn to prepare the weekly family lunch. Your smartphone informs you that you have chicken, carrots, and potatoes inside your refrigerator, and recommends that you roast a chicken. Roast chicken sounds good to you, so the refrigerator sends a roast chicken recipe to the oven, which then automatically preheats to the appropriate temperature. Meanwhile, through another phone app, your refrigerator says you’re running out of eggs, and that the milk has crossed the expiration date, so you have it do the online shopping. While putting the chicken in the oven, you remember that the washing machine is on, so you ask your brother, who is watching his

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favorite basketball team, to check if a cycle has been completed, since the TV’s already on. Although this sounds like a fanciful futuristic fable, these connected appliances already exist. South Korean electronics company LG introduced this line of smart appliances with advanced features that requires wireless Internet connection, “offering enhanced connectivity and greater user convenience” at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas early this year, according to a Jan. 7 LG news release. Users can control and monitor LG’s smart refrigerator, washing machine, and oven range, using smartphones and LG Smart TV, even from outside the home.

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In an April 2011 paper, “The Internet of Things (IoT): How the Next evolution of the Internet is changing everything,” Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), reported that as of 2010, there were about 12.5 billion objects connected to the Internet, more than the world population of 6.8 billion, making 2010 the starting point for Cisco’s Internet of Things. Dave Evans, Cisco’s chief futurist and author of the paper, predicts that there will be 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015, and 50 billion by 2020. In a May 7 blog posted on the Harvard Business Review, software development expert Stefan Ferber says the Internet of Things reflects a

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dramatic development in the Internet’s evolution: enabling communication among physical objects. By 2015, 6 billion devices will have access to the Internet, according to estimates by Bosch Software Innovations in Germany, where Ferber is the director for the Business Development of the Internet of Things and Services. “The fact that there will be a global system of interconnected computer networks, sensors, actuators, and devices all using the internet protocol holds so much potential to change our lives that it is often referred to as the internet’s next generation,” he writes.

Household robots. Getting back to your

everyday life, from the kitchen, you use your phone

• July 15-28, 2013

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue

to ask the robot vacuum cleaner to clean your room, The LG HOM-BOT vacuum cleaner, also unveiled at the CES trade show, can be remotely scheduled via a smartphone and Wi-Fi connection. The LG robot vacuum also has a camera that “allows for remote home surveillance via a smartphone and even allows owners to speak to family members at home.” It can also be operated from an LG SmartTV. According to the May 2013 McKinsey Global Institute report, “Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy,” although robotic vacuum cleaners have been around for years, sales of these and similar household robots—that perform domestic tasks such as mopping, lawn mowing, and gutter-cleaning—are now growing rapidly, by about 15-20% annually. “Adoption could accelerate even further by 2025

as these machines become more capable and consumers consider the trade-offs between buying robots, sacrificing leisure time, or hiring professional cleaners or gardeners to perform these tasks,” the report predicts.

Wi-Fi doorbell, doorlock. Your phone rings.

When you answer the call, it launches a video chat with your aunt at the front door. The WiFi-connected video doorbell DoorBot, from the California design firm Edison Junior, connects to mobile devices and lets the user remotely see and chat with the visitors at the front door. It will be available next month.

So you unlock the door for your aunt by simply pressing a button on your smartphone. Lockitron, a keyless, smartphone-controlled door lock developed

See who’s at the front door and let the in, anytime and from anywhere

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by Cameron Robertson and Paul Gerhardt, works even if the Internet or power go out and allows consumers to use the original key.

Connected pet feeder. In the middle of her

visit, your aunt remembers it’s time to feed her puppy at home. By tapping a button on her phone, the automated feeder at her house dispenses food for her pet. After 20 minutes, she receives a Twitter message saying that her Shih Tzu has been fed. The wireless feeder, Pintofeeder, invented by Carlos Herrera from California, is connected to an app that remotely feeds the pet, as well as monitors food intake. Pintofeeder will also learn about pet’s typical feeding times and automatically create a schedule to dispense food. It can also report how much pets have eaten via text, email and Facebook message. According to the product’s website, production of the

Pintofeeder began in early March, and availability in 2013 will be limited.

Interactive plant assistant. Another app

on your aunt’s phone says that her orchids need watering. Koubachi, a wi-fi plant sensor that looks like a sawed-off golf club, measures soil moisture, temperature, and light intensity for the potted plant that it is placed alongside. It connects to an iPhone app to send notifications or e-mail to users if their plant needs watering, misting, light, shade, or fertilizer, as well as other plant-care advice.

Monitoring your health, your diet, and your exercise regimen. After lunch,

a voice asks how much you have eaten and how much exercise you’ve already gotten in today. But it’s not your personal trainer asking, it’s Autom, your friendly 15-inch-tall robot weight coach sitting in the kitchen that keeps track of your eating and exercise and provides feedback, advice, and encouragement to keep you motivated to maintain your diet and exercise program. According to its website, shipping of orders starts this year.

Pintofeeder dispenses food by simply tapping a button in your phone YouTube

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Findings from studies of Cory Kidd, founder of Intuitive Automata, creator of Autom, compared the effects of interacting with a robot versus an animated character on the screen “showed that people were more engaged by a robot and when they got information from a robot or an animated character, consistently found a robot to be more informative and more credible,” according to the company website.

• July 15-28, 2013

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Then, you check your weight via your Wi-Fi-enabled body scale. Withings body scale has an online progress-tracking system that monitors your weight, heart rate, as well as the temperature of the room you’re in, and that room’s air quality. Data is sent from the scale to the Withings app on your smartphone, where it can be tracked for your own personal record, or to share later with a physician or family members. You decide you need to burn more calories by running, so you put on your Armour 39 gear, consisting of a chest strap that sends basic performance measurements – speed, intensity, Autom is a friendly robot that helps you diet Intuitive Automata heart rate, calories burned, and a record of past performances – either to your Armour 39 watch or to an iOS app for your iPhone to pick up later. (According to a February Mashable article about the Armour 39 system, its developer, From the toilet, he can move to the sink, where American sports clothing manufacturer Under his smart Beam Brush – the world’s first smart Armour, is working on developing touchscreentoothbrush – tracks his brushing habits and capable T-shirts, but that product is still reports them to a smartphone app or directly to his years away.) dentist. Apart from that, the toothbrush will inform you when it’s time to replace the head, and even let The smart bathroom customizes your you order new ones directly from your phone. experience. Meanwhile, your brother goes to the bathroom, and the toilet seat greets him Digital pills monitor your treatment. “Hello” and plays his favorite Beatles song before Meanwhile, your aunt receives a call from her doctor he sits on it. The Numi Toilet, Wisconsin-based reminding her to take her heart medication. The manufacturer Kohler’s most advanced toilet, doctor will know if your aunt is taking medication as has a Bluetooth receiver for users to stream prescribed and as scheduled, through a pill with tiny audio from their mobile devices, an SD card to sensors and transmitters that your aunt swallowed. access custom playlists or personalized welcome messages, a USB port for software updates, According to the website of California-based according to an April Mashable article on the company Proteus Digital Health, the company is latest upgrade to the system. working to create digital medicines, or ingestible

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Users can change colors of Philips Hue bulbs using mobile device YouTube

sensors, that helps track patients’ medication-taking behavior and monitor how the body is responding to the medicine. The information from Digital Medicines could be shared with family members, clinicians and other caregivers, allowing for better informed treatment decisions. These digital medicines can be used in heart failure, central nervous system, and transplant care. “As a result, you could tell if you’re taking your medicines as prescribed, while at the same time receiving unprecedented feedback on your physiological response to treatment. This offers a path to improved health,” said the company. “Currently, over 50% of people don’t get full benefit from the pharmaceuticals they use, because they take the wrong dose or have trouble consistently following their prescriptions,” it noted.

The

According to the aforementioned McKinsey report, Internet of Things technology can have a direct impact on human lives and health. For example, it says doctors now perform “capsule endoscopy” using a pill-shaped microcamera with wireless data communication capabilities that travels through a patient’s digestive system and transmits images to a computer, sensors that read the vital signs of patients at home.

Changing hue on cue. At the end of

your eventful day, you enter the bedroom, and the lights automatically turn themselves on. Through your smartphone, you adjust the color to vibrant blue white. Before long, the light flashes, indicating that it’s time for you to sleep.

cenSEI Report

• July 15-28, 2013

you gotta see this

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

99 bottles of beer on the wall? 99 bottles IS the wall. In a June 28 dispatch,

Philips’ smart light bulb Hue, is a web-enabled LED home lighting system that, when used with a mobile app, lets the users control the color and brightness of lights in their homes. It allows you to switch lights on and off remotely, set timers, and create or change mood lighting. According to the Hue website, Hue lights can automatically turn on or change settings as you arrive home, or turn everything off when you leave using smartphone’s GPS or Geofencing technology. You can also have your lights flash at a specific time with its alarm tool. With the timer function, hue can turn the lights off, flash, or change color after a set amount of time. “So you can time your workout with light, have your lights flash when your favorite show is about to start, or even shine bright pink to let you know when the cupcakes are ready. It’s also great for telling the kids that playtime is up and it’s time for bed.” Also, Philips employs a service that connects hue lights to over 60 different products and services. With Hue, you can “change your light’s color to let you know when it’s raining outside, blink your lights when your favorite sports team starts a new game. Randomly change your light’s color with a text message. ”

Confidentiality, security of information still concerns. The Sept. 2012 white paper

“What the Internet of Things (IoT) Needs to Become a Reality” highlights the importance of safeguarding the information obtained by IoT services and creating mechanisms to ensure confidentiality of information exchanged. However, the report by American embedded hardware producer Freescale and British software design company ARM admits: “This is a tough balancing act, as there are a whole host of IoTrelated services designed to leverage data mining

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the Seattle, Washington-based environment news and commentary site Grist called our attention to a Buddhist temple complex built from recycled beer bottles, as r eported in a feature in the United Kingdom-based Telegraph.

and generate push services. The ‘opt out’ mechanism for such services would be subject to the governance of the IoT.” In a Nov. 2012 blog posted on CNN, John Horn, the president of RACO Wireless, a provider of wireless data solutions for the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) industry, talks about threats to the growth of M2M technology, which allows machines to exchange information. Horn said although the M2M technology (another term for IoT) already exists, it doesn’t invade every aspect of our business and daily lives yet because of two factors: long development periods and adoption of 4G connectivity. “Many enterprise M2M solutions require months, if not years, and a significant financial commitment to get to deployment. With those daunting hurdles facing many technology decision makers, and despite an average return on investment at around 40%, companies are deferring their M2M strategies,” explains Horn. He stresses, “We need to get to a point where implementing an M2M strategy involves a matter of hours or days instead of months and years.” The shift in the mobile industry towards 3G and 4G networks is another hurdle. As Horn observes, command-and-control communication links typically need to carry and transmit only a few kilobytes of data for any given node, unless high-resolution image processing or video data is involved. “As mobile carriers negotiate with limited spectrum to support 4G rollouts, 2G networks are often sacrificed. The problem created is that M2M applications not only lose support, but they face significant expenses to enter into a 3G or 4G system where their data usage does not come close to justifying the costs, not to mention the significant capital investment required for a pricey 3G or 4G compatible device,” he explains.

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According to the Telegraph feature, the complex called Wat Lan Kuad (“The Temple of a Million Bottles”), in Thailand’s Sisaket province near the Photo credit to Mark Fischer and Grist.org border with Cambodia, actually uses 1.5 million green Heineken and brown Chang bottles in Wat Lan Kuad, the temple that Chang (and Heineken) constituting the main temple, a crematorium, prayer rooms, a hall, water tower, tourist bathrooms, and monks’ quarters consisting of several small bungalows raised off the ground, along with mosaics of Buddha created with recycled bottle caps. To be sure, the complex is not just bottles, as the buildings do have a concrete core, we’re reminded, but the point shouldn’t be lost on us that there might be something we can do with all our San Miguel beer bottles after we’ve drained them thoroughly. And perhaps we can add our Ginebra San Miguel and Tanduay Rhum bottles to the mix (which should come up to a good number, given that the Philippines is reportedly the world’s biggest consumer of gin and its third-largest consumer of rum, per this recent infographic from The Economist).

The sprawling art of one acrylic pen. Christopher Jobson’s Colossal blog, which deals primarily with matters of non-digital art and visual ingenuity, calls our attention to Japanese acrylic-pen artist Manabu Ikeda, in his June 27 entry, “Master of Pen and Ink: The Monumental Drawings of Manabu Ikeda.” He describes Ikeda’s method as follows: “(A) blank paper canvas larger than a person spread before him, a small acrylic pen in his hand, and hundreds of days to fill with faintly imperceptible progress from a mind brimming with explosive creativity … works in areas measuring roughly 4″ square, spending eight hours a day, often for years, on a single drawing that can eventually dominate an entire wall … complete Image credit to Manabu Ikeda and Colossal visual cacophony that somehow results in a single A detail from Manabu Ikeda’s 6’ x 11’ Foretoken. cohesive image. The most unbelievable aspect being that Ikeda has no idea what the final artwork will look like, but instead explores each work organically from day to day as he progresses inch by inch.” The blog entry includes samples of and details from some of his work, including the dimensions of the original works, some of which measure 3’ x 4’, 6.5’ x 6.5’, or 6’ x 11’.

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HOW WE CONNECT

wired into the world wide web

Wired into the World Wide Web

24/7 connectivity is coming for both people and devices

POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue

By Marishka Noelle M. Cabrera

7:30 AM, Monday, John checks his smartphone for instant messages from his girlfriend in Switzerland. Still on his phone, he uploads pictures from his beach trip with friends over the weekend to his social networking account. After showering and getting dressed, his glasses flash a reminder about his 11 AM meeting with the boss, while John is sipping his coffee. It is already 8:45 AM, according to his smart watch, which also brings John the latest news of the day. He hurries to do some last-minute tweaking of his presentation on his notebook, plugging in figures from a marketing report he accessed through his desktop computer. As he heads out the door, he shuts down the coffee maker, stereo, and desktop computer with just his voice. Today, there are about 2.5 billion people and more than 9 billion devices around the world that are connected to the Internet, with another 2-3 billion more people set to gain access to the Internet by 2025, predicts a McKinsey Global Institute report, “Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy.”

STRATEGY POINTS A McKinsey Global Institute report says there are about 2.5 billion people and 9 billion devices currently connected to the Internet, and predicts that 2-3 billion more people will have Internet access by 2025 Being connected 24/7 will be the norm in 2020 and a prerequisite for participation in society, a Booz & Co. report finds

As the number of people with Web access is expected to grow to over 5 billion in just over a decade, it’s the concept of the mobile Internet, one of the disruptive technologies discussed in the report, that will affect how these 5 billion people go about their lives, “giving them tools to become potential innovators or entrepreneurs.”

Entire industries will be influenced by Generation C. Today, many like John already

live in a hyper-connected world, as more and more people and gadgets are being connected seamlessly through the Internet. Social interactions, business meetings, educational instruction, medical consultations, international trade, banking, shopping, and other services can now be done online. By 2020, being connected will be the norm, and a prerequisite for participation in society—at least as far as Booz & Co. is concerned. According to the company’s “Rise of Generation C: Implications for the World in 2020” report, by the year 2020, an entire generation will have grown up in a primarily digital world. Computers, the Internet, mobile devices, and social networking sites will become second nature to them. By then, they will constitute the largest group of consumers worldwide. As such, entire industries will be influenced by these constantly connected, contentcentric, and community-oriented individuals. More importantly, Internet connectivity bridges the digital divide, particularly for the developing world where disparities among urban and rural areas are more pronounced. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) March report on “Internet broadband for an inclusive digital society,” broadband connections can impact economic development, education, healthcare, social and cultural enrichment, and political engagement.

Challenges include securing private data and building the digital infrastructure to support the growing number of Internet users

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wired into the world wide web

Bringing the Internet to remote parts of the developing world. On his way to work, John

contacts a farmer in Vietnam who will supply raw materials. This farmer was able to get in touch with John’s company because he was alerted through an app on his smartphone about potential markets for his crops. And because he was able to double his farm’s yield with the help of online video lectures, he will be able to meet the demand. The McKinsey report says more than 3.5 billion citizens in developing economies are expected to have access to the Internet in 2025. Moreover, it will be possible for entrepreneurs in developing economies to compete globally in online commerce, while global players will have a new channel to access fast-growing markets.

Project Loon to leapfrog over fiber-optic cables. A June 15 Agence France-Presse report says

Google has revealed plans to send balloons to the edge of space with the aim of bringing the Internet to the two-thirds of the world population without Web access. Scientists from Google released up to 30 helium-filled test balloons flying 20 kilometers above Christchurch in New Zealand with antennae linked to ground-based stations in an experimental project named Project Loon. These balloons can beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to 3G networks or faster. If successful, the technology might allow countries to leapfrog the expense of installing fiber-optic cables. “It works by ground stations connecting to the local Internet infrastructure and beaming signals to the balloons, which are self-powered by solar panels,” the report explains, “The balloons, which once in the stratosphere will be twice as high as commercial

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airliners and barely visible to the naked eye, are then able to communicate with each other, forming a mesh network in the sky. Users below have an Internet antennae they attach the side of their house which can send and receive data signals from the balloons passing overhead.”

has a team of about 100 product designers working on a “wristwatchlike device that may perform some of the tasks now handled by the iPhone and iPad.” Chief executive officer Tim Cook is said to be facing pressure from investors amid slowing sales growth and competition from rivals such as Samsung, which a new revolutionary

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According to an earlier Wall Street Journal report, Google is said to be “deep in a multipronged effort to build and help run wireless networks in emerging markets as part of a plan to connect a billion or more new people to the Internet.” The tech giant plans to team up with local telecommunications firms from emerging markets to develop the networks, as well as the business models to support them.

Mobile Internet availability fuels the growth of mobile devices. With the increase in Internet

connectivity, the mobile computing industry continues to grow, along with other tech innovations, such as wearable devices. “Ubiquitous connectivity and an explosive proliferation of apps are enabling users to go about their daily routines with new ways of knowing, perceiving, and even interacting with the physical world,” the McKinsey & Company report says. Wearable computing devices are described in a July 1 piece in Mashable as products aimed “to record our

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gadget could address. Nike and health tech firm Fitbit are already offering wearable machines for tracking fitness.

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interactions with the world and then turn that data into something easily understood, giving us insights in how we might change our behavior for the better.” Nowadays, technological progress has enabled these gadgets to have small, cheap sensors that connect to a smartphone or tablet and use “the phone’s data connection as its path to the cloud, where most data processing takes place.” Google Glass is an example of a wearable device with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD). It functions like a smartphone or tablet—it receives and sends messages, takes photos and videos, gives directions, and allows users to share and retrieve information over the Internet—but is controlled mainly by voice command. Tech giants Samsung and Apple are reported to be creating their own hands-free devices, says a May 6 article in technology review site Teck Comes First. Apple, Bloomberg says in a February report,

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Bloomberg says the introduction of wearable computing devices may signal a new direction for the consumer electronics industry, similar to what the iPad did for the tablet market.

Cloud technology and the Internet of things bring services and objects to the connected world. Cloud technology can deliver any computer

application or service over a network or the Internet, with minimal local software or processing power required. In essence, cloud computing involves storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of one’s hard drive, as described in a March 13 article in PC Mag. “With an online connection, cloud computing can be done anywhere, anytime,” it says. The McKinsey report adds: “The cloud is enabling the explosive growth of Internet-based services, from search to streaming media to offline storage of personal data (photos, books, music), as well as the background processing capabilities that enable mobile Internet devices to do things like respond to spoken commands to ask for directions.”

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• July 15-28, 2013

wired into the world wide web

The Industrial Revolution meets the Information Age the room can automatically identify you and tap into a cloudbased profile of your preferences, such as room temperature, music, and lighting. The We will live in a world blanketed by sensors, with objects that react to us, tell us what we room also knows need, and customize the environment around us, Source: How Stuff Works whether you had a stressful day based on the calendar app of your phone or the biosensors that Everyday objects are being equipped with detect heart rate and blood pressure. networked sensors and actuators, bringing them to the connected world. The Internet of things is another technology mentioned in the McKinsey report that can impact people, business, society, government, and health in a big way. This enables machinery, shipments, infrastructure, and devices “to monitor their environment, report their status, receive instructions, and even take action based on the information they receive.” Tech expert Jonathan Strickland explains in a video from How Stuff Works how the Internet of things can impact the way we live by walking us through the living room of the future. He describes how sensors are taking information from real physical objects and uploading it to the Internet. “It’s a world where your environment transforms as you walk through it because technology that you may not even be aware of is monitoring your every move,” he says. The video shows how objects in

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Challenges of being constantly connected.

Nevertheless, the digital infrastructure must be able to support the growing number of devices accessing the Internet. Today, cellular networks, such as 3G and 4G, and Wi-Fi are being used in homes, offices, and public spaces. The McKinsey report predicts that over the coming decade, 5G cellular networks, satellite services, and possibly longrange Wi-Fi could become the next network advances. “These technologies will need to fight for increasingly scarce wireless frequencies, but new approaches to dynamically sharing spectrum, such as software-defined radios, could help ease the crunch,” it notes. Meanwhile, a June 21 piece in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network raises security concerns over the Internet of things. It notes, “Paradoxically, the

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Perhaps it’s fitting that one of the 20th-century giants of the Industrial Revolution figure a new path to tread in the 21st century. In November 2012, General Electric (GE) announced that the world was “on the threshold of a new era of innovation and change with the rise of the Industrial Internet,” a term it coined in a report by Peter C. Evans, GE’s director of global strategy and analytics, and Marco Annunziata, GE’s chief economist. The report, it said, discusses “the convergence of the global industrial system with the power of advanced computing, analytics, low-cost sensing and new levels of connectivity permitted by the Internet.” A separate report in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Technology Review, also in November 2012, broke down GE’s vision of the Industrial Internet thusly: “The term, coined inside GE’s R&D division, reflects the company’s hope that adding more sensors to machinery will result in a deluge of data that will in turn let companies squeeze more efficiency out of locomotives, jet engines, MRI machines, and other equipment GE sells.” According to the report, GE is set to invest $1.5 billion in the idea over a three-year period, looking at ways, for example, to sift through all the data to predict when GE’s jet engines in service will need maintenance. And in December 2012, it put some more money where its mouth was, with GE Aviation and Accenture announcing the formation of Taleris, a joint venture providing airlines and cargo carriers around the world with “intelligent operations services focused on improving efficiency by leveraging aircraft performance data, prognostics, recovery and planning optimization solutions.” But aviation is not the only area where GE sees potential in marrying machines to analytics and connectivity. “These innovations promise to bring greater speed and efficiency to industries as diverse as aviation, rail transportation, power generation, oil and gas development, and health care delivery,” Evans and Annunziata predict in their aforementioned report, as summed up in the GE announcement. And the potential appears to be enormous. The Industrial Internet, according to Evans and Annunziata, has the potential to boost average incomes in the United States by 25% to 40% over the next 20 years, and to lift growth back to levels not seen since the late 1990s. And If the rest of the world achieved just half of the U.S. productivity gains, the Industrial Internet could add from $10 to $15 trillion to global GDP – the size of today’s U.S. economy – over the same period, the authors predicted.

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• July 15-28, 2013

supergraphic

wired into the world wide web

very principle without you even that makes knowing it. the [Internet of things] so And then there’s powerful — the psychological the potential cost of being to share data constantly instantly with connected. In everyone and her TED Talk in Sherry Turkle, professor at MIT, talks about how technology and everything February, 2012, the need to be connected also has the potential to make us feel (every Sherry Turkle, more alone authorized Massachusetts entity, that is) — creates a huge cybersecurity threat.” Institute of Technology (MIT) professor and director It will allow data to be shared more widely than ever of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, argues and in real time. that “those little devices…are so psychologically powerful that they don’t only change what we do, Protecting your privacy will be a challenge. Since they change who we are.” She talks about how being information is shared or stored on a variety of constantly connected and attached to our devices devices, it will be hard to keep track of what kind of can get in the way of us understanding one another data is being made available to the public. Imagine and ourselves. your wearable device, for instance, sending out information about your location, the person you are In many ways, technologies that allow us to build with, which items you bought, your health and fitness a network of connections in our daily lives have levels, and the like. Taken together, these mobile transformed the world for the better. And yet, these devices, coupled with the Internet of things, have the virtual connections can only make sense if real-life potential to build a treasure trove of data about you, relationships are not substituted, but cultivated.

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The long road to Facebook.

As social media takes hold of the Information Age and sends us hurtling toward, moving past, bouncing off, and occasionally colliding with all sorts of information at warp speed, the very idea of a history of social media seems quaint and even dated. And yet, we are reminded now and then, that in order to know to where we are going, we need to know from where we came. Canadian journalist and blogger Cendrine Marrouat, with some help from Karim Benyagoub, provides us with a brief if unofficial history of social media, as summed up in a neat infographic that takes us from the origins of the Internet (as Arpanet) in 1969 to its 2.4-billion population of users by 2012, including milestones and stopovers along the way that a new generation might have been too young to remember (e.g., the first e-mail was sent in 1971, a company called ICQ was doing instant messaging before AOL, Google, or Yahoo, and Hotmail, one of the first web-based, commercial e-mail services, was taken over by Microsoft in 1997, a year after it was set up by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, as we recall).

Image credit: Karim Benyagoub and Cendrine Marrouat

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HOW WE TRAVEL

The Age of Autonomy Is Coming Soon to a Highway Near You

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Ghost drivers on the horizon

The Age of Autonomy Is Coming Soon to a Highway Near You

The age of autonomous transportation is dawning, featuring vehicles that can maneuver with reduced or even no human intervention, as identified in the May 2013 McKinsey Global Institute report “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy.”

After the advent of driverless cars, will we be ready for pilotless planes? By Victoria Fritz

The technology for driverless vehicles is already available, or at least fast developing. Google’s driverless cars have logged over 300,000 miles since 2010 without accidents (one accident in 2011 occurred when someone was driving), according to a May 13 article posted on the United States-based Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) site. While Google’s cars rack up the mileage, BMW, Toyota and General Motors continue developing their own models. Across the Atlantic, in Spain, Volvo upped Google’s feat by queuing three cars behind a lorry for 200 kilometers on a busy highway, as reported in Forbes in May 2012, in a practice called road-training, i.e., making a train from queued cars).

The promised benefits of driverless technology. Driverless technology offers

many benefits, not the least of which would be increased safety. The majority of road accidents, collectively responsible for over a million deaths a year, according to World Bank figures, are caused by human error. Up to 90% of road accidents can be attributed to human error, as reported in April 2011 on alertdriving.com. Removing man from the equation would theoretically reduce the number of road accidents significantly, saving anywhere from 30,000 to 150,000 lives a year, according to the McKinsey report.

STRATEGY POINTS: Driverless cars are coming soon, and people are looking forward to it, according to at least one global survey Unmanned passenger planes are also on the drawing board and the testing ground

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A special report on driverless cars, “Look, no hands,” in the April 20 edition of The Economist,

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cites decreased congestion as another benefit. In a demonstration, Volvo packed autonomous cars together in “road trains.” This increases road capacity while easing traffic. Road trains also create an aerodynamic effect that increases fuel efficiency, which leads to a reduction in CO2 emissions. A 1995 study by the University of Southern California showed that it could improve fuel efficiency by up to 30%. Freeing up the time allotted for driving also means more time for work or leisure, increasing human productivity. People can now start working, even while on their way to the office. What would that do to the official eight-hour workday? According to the McKinsey report, the likely major impediments to a quick adoption of this new technology are creating the necessary regulatory frameworks, and gaining public support.

Reducing one risk, but begetting others.

The PBS article examined certain concerns faced by the driverless vehicle concept. While it decreases one danger (by reducing or eliminating human error), it presents another – the possibility of computer error, especially at high speeds. At present, car sensors are not able to cope with extreme weather conditions, such as heavy rain or snow-covered streets. Less obvious visual cues, such as a construction project, could be lost on a driverless vehicle. Judgment calls such as when to go at a four-way stop could be tricky for such cars. An April 13 blog post on the Harvard Law School community’s discussion site City Law discusses the legal aspects of driverless cars. So far, Nevada, California and Florida are the only states that have passed laws addressing automated vehicles. With its onset, driving licensure laws would need an overhaul.

• July 15-28, 2013

The Age of Autonomy Is Coming Soon to a Highway Near You

The traffic safety governing body would need to promulgate new standards to address the technology and software. It poses questions: if a self-driving car hits a pedestrian, who is liable?

Carmakers already working on driverless cars. Despite the lack of a regulatory framework, according to the McKinsey report, the following large carmakers are already developing their own versions: General Motors, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, and Volvo.

Machine vision is a key capability in achieving vehicle autonomy, with other systems working in tandem. (For a quick review of the technologies involved, refer to “The Car of the Future: A Thinking Green Machine,” in the March 26, 2012 issue of The CenSEI Report.)

Costs prohibitive now, but coming down drastically later? Chunka Mui, a contributor at

Forbes magazine, analyzed the obstacles to public acceptance of the driverless car in a January 2013 piece. He listed cost as prohibitive at present, saying estimated cost of each Google driverless car is more than US$300,000. However, using the trajectory of the cost of a gigabyte of memory as an analogue – in 1981, a gigabyte cost US$300,000, going down to US$10,000 a decade later, and then down to US$10 another 10 years later, and now it costs less than 10 cents – he predicts that driverless technology will see the same drastic reduction in cost. Mui also looked into the question of public adoption. People will be reluctant to let go of the steering wheel. But he believes that once society sees the benefits, people will come to trust the technology.

Public trust still lacking. An April 20

Christian Science Monitor blog post by Richard Read also encouraged people in the know to talk

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with others about the driverless car in order to speed up development. Read was recounting tips given during the Society of Automotive Engineers’ World Congress in Detroit, Michigan, that week. Participants agreed the technology is already here, but also identified the main impediment as lack of public trust. First, people need to become aware of autonomous vehicles. Second, they need to be convinced of their reliability.

CISCO GLOBAL SURVEY PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE OF DRIVERLESS CARS

To get a better idea of the public pulse on this matter, Cisco conducted a survey earlier this year, and published its results in May on gigaom.com. The global survey had 1,514 respondents aged 18 and older. Of the total number surveyed, across the globe, 57% said they would ride a driverless car, as reported by Kevin Fitchard in his May 14 blog post in GigaOM discussing the Cisco survey. Countries, however, varied widely in their respective national responses. Brazil topped the charts with a 95% approval rating, followed by India and China. Japan was a low 28%. Likewise, western European countries were lukewarm. In the United States, where many prototypes of driverless technology are being tested, the approval rating was 60%, above the global average. Table from “Cisco survey: Consumers are getting comfortable with the idea of the driverless car,” Kevin Fitchard, as posted on GigaOM, May 14, 2013.

Fitchard himself acknowledged unwllingness to give up total control of the car, saying he was more comfortable with some autonomy.

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• July 15-28, 2013

The Age of Autonomy Is Coming Soon to a Highway Near You

Getting a charge from driving Autonomous, or automatic to be more accurate, charging is another way of increasing efficiency on the road. Ever since electric vehicles debuted on the market, the main obstacle has always been the battery – the cost, the size, the storage capacity. Engineers are now working on solving that problem by creating an automatic charging system, that is, one built into the road. Back in 2010, this system was launched in London, as discussed in an article on England’s autocar website. The system design is shown in the following graphic:

He also questioned the veracity of an industrysponsored survey, saying that Cisco, even though it wasn’t General Motors or Google, still had a stake in the matter. But his observation of the generally thorough nature of Cisco surveys put his own doubts to rest.

When will the future arrive? There is some

discussion as to when this new technology will be available to the mass market. The panel at SAE sees this happening in 2025, according to a Wall Street Journal April 17 online article. General Motors was reported as predicting the public debut of driverless cars in 2020, as reported in the aforementioned issue of The CenSEI Report. Google makes the boldest prediction, and is hoping to offer this technology to the public by 2018.

Ghost pilots in the sky? Whenever the driverless car gets here, do you think you’ll be ready for airplanes that pilot themselves?

1 - Power

5 - System

4 - Receiver Pad

3 - Wireless Electricity & Data

2 - Transmitter

6 - Battery

A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an autonomous robotic plane capable of flying indoors without aid of a remote control device. This could contribute significantly to the development of an pilotless passenger airplane. Click on the image below for a video of the autonomous robotic plane in action.

In June this year, a trial on pilotless passenger airplanes was conducted in the United Kingdom, as reported on the site of The Engineer magazine. The age of unmanned aircraft is drawing near, the report declared, qualifying that this was apart from already present military drones and remotely operated miniature vehicles. British engineers announced that an adapted conventional

When commercial flying was first introduced, people took a long time to get over their fear of flying. When they realized it was relatively safe, they hopped on planes in droves. Would people be willing to ride a pilotless plane as well? A November 2012 piece in The Economist looked into the possibility of pilotless aircraft taking off even before driverless cars, and conducted its own survey on whether its readers thought pilotless aircraft would take off before driverless cars. This writer’s own misgivings notwithstanding, the survey results indicate that an overwhelming 70% of respondents believe the pilotless plane will happen even before the driverless car. Most of the required technology, such as autopilot or self-landing, is already there, the Economist piece observed. The afore-mentioned ASTRAEA tests are about ascertaining whether these capabilities can be achieved without a pilot in the cockpit, and in compliance with existing rules of air travel.

You voted NoTotal votes 8486

Voting opened on Nov 23rd 2012

More recently, on June 18, Business Insider ran an article that mentions Volvo’s own project, in partnership with Swedish power company Alstom, to create a road that charges vehicles as they drive over it. CAPTION

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Jetstream passenger plane flew 500 miles without aid of a human operator, under the aegis of ASTRAEA, the U.K.’s cross-industry project to develop technology and regulations for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or systems (UAS). The report consisted of an interview, where experts spoke at length about this new technology’s issues.

Flying by the numbers

An article appearing in the BBC’s Future section in March 2012 also mentions this “wireless highway” as a way to address electric car motorists’ range anxiety (fear of losing power on the road).

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Graphic from The Economist poll, “Will pilotless airplanes takeoff before driverless cars?”, generated from writer’s own participation in survey.

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• July 15-28, 2013

wow tech

The Age of Autonomy Is Coming Soon to a Highway Near You

The Internet of anywhere and everywhere. For the apparent ubiquity

of the Internet for some of us, it’s easy to forget that Internet penetration is still less than 30% worldwide -- per this infographic from The Next Web -- and that there are still areas in the world without Internet access because it hasn’t been cost-effective for service providers to lay out broadband cable or fiber-optic digital telephone lines.

Many trains are already driverless Driverless trains are already commonly used in cities, including the Philippines’ Line 2 (RectoSantolan) system. It is merely a question of degree. According to German manufacturing giant Siemens, there are various modes of automation:

The Verge reports that Google has gotten approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to operate its nationwide TV whitespace (TVWS) database, which would allow otherwise unconnected people to find unused local television frequencies (channels, if you prefer) for online access. The company started testing the database in March. Image credit: Google

All the basic technologies already exist, but the main challenge is the application and integration of these technologies in a certifiable manner, said one expert. Another expert does not believe that completely pilotless planes will be realized. The technology will only will be used to progressively aid pilots, increase safety and cost efficiency.

• Driver-controlled – driven without any assistance systems • Partly automated (SCO or Supervision and Control Train Operation)– driver still drives and brakes the metro train manually; a train protection system continuously monitors its speed; supporting information such as current movements are displayed in the driver’s cab

Other experts believe it is possible, but in the long term. If it is repeatedly demonstrated that the technology works in a safe and reliable manner, then the public will be more willing to accept it.

• Semi-automated (STO or Semi-automated Train Operation) - driver starts the train manually, then the automatic system takes over precision control of movement between stations, stopping and opening of doors

Though the reach may be limited, surveys have shown that people are open to the driverless car and the unmanned plane. With the driverless car, emerging economies are more open than the older, Western European economies. Much work still needs to be done in terms of building support infrastructure, fool-proofing computer systems, and updating national regulatory frameworks, but by the time these are done – or perhaps even before – we might find the public already prepared for autonomous vehicles on our collective horizon.

• Driverless (DTO or Driverless Train Operation) – driving without human assistance; a train attendant can intervene in emergencies • Unattended (UTO or Unattended Train Operation) – there is no driver or train attendant on board The Philippines’ Line 2 is an example of a UTO system, also called the Automatic Train Operations system on the Light Rail Transit Authority website.

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The report also points out that TVWS is still an emerging technology, and that Google won’t be the first company to provide a whitespace broadband service. Earlier Verge reports mention similar experiments in Virginia and North Carolina, with the first whitespace network going live in North Carolina in 2012, and the first commercial whitespace network getting launched in rural California in April. Meanwhile, Google has also started experimenting with providing Internet access via stratospheric balloons, per a June 15 Agence France-Presse report. According to the report, the balloons, to be launched 20 kilometers above Christchurch, New Zealand, would receive signals from ground stations connected to the Internet, and then communicate with each other in the stratosphere. Users with Internet antennae attached to the side of their house would then be able to receive and data signals from the balloons. According to the report, Google hopes, ultimately, to have a ring of balloons circling the planet, providing access to every part of the globe, at the same time it cautions that it’s “awfully too early to think about covering the entire planet” just now.

Every picture tells two stories. The digital camera might be all around us, and the technology might have progressed to the point that “selfies” have done away with camera auto-timers, but it hasn’t done away with the need to leave your smartphone, tablet, or dedicated camera in the hands of a third party while you rush back to your group to be in the shot with them, lest you be entirely out of the picture. While it appears that there’s still no way around rushing back to be in the same shot, Gizmodo reports on a new concept that makes photographer and subject part of the same experience: a camera that splits in half to capture photographer and subject in the same instant. The Duo, a working-concept camera developed by Chin-Wei Liao, an Innovation Design Engineering student at London’s Royal College of Art, is actually two point-and-shoot cameras held together by magnets but rigged so that both cameras shoot photos when one of the buttons is held down.

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• July 15-28, 2013

HOW WE POWER UP

New Ways to Extract Energy Come with Big Benefits and Big Risks

New Ways to Extract Energy Come with Big Benefits and Big Risks Growing demand for energy is spurring new, controversial ways to get it By Jerome Balinton

STRATEGY POINTS Population and economic growth in emerging countries such as China and India will result in greater demand for energy Advanced technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling allow us to extract oil and gas from previously unrecoverable sources but are controversial for their possible effects on the environment

POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue

ight or heat? That’s the question facing humanity in the decades ahead, as the world’s burning of fossil fuels is raising global temperatures, with devastating impact in the long term. Must people really choose between keeping the lights on and cellphones charged, or saving the planet by cutting back on use of the juice? To be sure, the world needs a lot of energy for its ever-growing population and its increasing economic activity. Not to mention the billions of modern gadgets making life more convenient and fun for increasingly affluent communities — each of them plugged into the energy grid.

huge population, which constitutes the world’s most populous nation, and its rapidly growing economy, which has driven the country’s high energy demand and the consequent quest to secure energy sources, according to country analysis in the EIA study. India is another Asian country that will need more energy in the future as its economy grows. According to the EIA, India is already the world’s fourth-largest energy consumer, trailing only the U.S., China, and Russia. Environmentalists hope that when Asians flick the switch and step on the accelerator, the power will come from green sources. But in fact, as energy demand in Asia dramatically rises, it will continue to be provided by coal, oil, natural gas, and even nuclear power. The succeeding graph from the Asian Development Bank’s “Outlook 2013: Asia’s Energy Challenge,” projects the composition of Asia’s energy requirements by 2035 (see following chart).

Rapidly growing economies China and India, for example, will be needing twice the energy they consume today, as discussed in “Global Trends 2030 Report: Alternative World” from the United States’ National Intelligence Council (NIC) FUEL COMPOSITION and “International Energy Outlook 2011,” from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The NIC report cites McKinsey Global Institute in predicting that demand for power in China’s cities will grow more than double in 2030 from today’s level, accounting for roughly 20% of global energy consumption. This mainly reflects China’s

OF ASIA’S ENERGY REQUIREMENTS

Mtoe = million tons of equivalent, NRE = new and renewable energy Graph from “Outlook 2013: Asia’s Energy Challenge,” Asian Development Bank

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New Ways to Extract Energy Come with Big Benefits and Big Risks

PROCESS OF EXTRACTING GAS AND OIL FROM SHALE

Next-generation Asians may tweet and rally for clean, renewable power, but the numbers so far point to dark carbon still keeping most of the lights on in the region’s burgeoning cities

Next-generation Asians may tweet and rally for clean renewable power, but the numbers so far point to dark carbon still keeping most of the lights on in the region’s burgeoning cities. According to the ADB report, Asia’s coal use is expected to increase by 81%, while oil consumption approximately doubles, and natural gas use more than triples from 2010 to 2035. Likewise, the report states that use of renewables and nuclear power will also grow but will make a relatively small contribution to Asia’s energy requirements by 2035.

The ADB report indicates that the energy mix will differ by subregion. For one, coal plays a much larger role in East and South Asia than in Central Asia, South East Asia, or the Pacific. The ADB report also forecasts that natural gas occupies a markedly bigger share of energy mix in Central Asia than in the four other subregions East and South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific). Relatively low demand in the Pacific islandnations will be met by oil and natural gas.

Producers turn to unconventional extraction of oil and gas reserves. With demand for energy growing amid dwindling conventional oil and gas reserves, gas and oil

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companies have invested to develop new technologies for extracting “reserves that cannot be extracted by conventional drilling methods,” as McKinsey Global Institute put it in its own May 2013 report, “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy.” The new technologies developed to extract previously unrecoverable oil and gas are hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

According to the NIC Global Trends report, fracking is a relatively new technology used to extract gas and oil from rock formations, having been first developed and commercialized in the late 1940s. Fracking consists of pumping fluid (usually water) mixed with propping agent (usually sand) and a dozen or so chemical additives to control physical characteristics such as viscosity, pH, surface tension, and scale prevention, at high pressure into a well bore. This high pressure creates fractures that propagate through the rock formation; the propping holds the fractures open to allow the gas to flow through the opened porous formation once the well has been completed. Fracking has evolved, from using 750 gallons of fluid and 400 pounds of sand in a well to using a million gallons of fluid and 5 million pounds of sand. The latest fracturing operations use

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Illustration from McKinsey Global Institute’s “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy,” May 2013, Exhibit 13, p. 127.

computer simulations, modeling, and micro-seismic fracture mapping as well as tilt sensors, which monitor rock deformations. Modernization of these technologies made way for oil and gas companies to explore and extract more potential deposits of shale.

Fracking coupled with horizontal drilling for more efficient recovery. For fracking to be more

efficient, the technology is coupled with horizontal drilling, a technique that became standard practice in the 1980s in oil and gas wells, according to the Global Trends report. The next graph, from the

The

McKinsey report, shows the location of shale gas and the process of its extraction using technologies fracturing and horizontal drilling. The McKinsey report says that gas- and petroleumrich shale rock is typically located much deeper below the surface than conventional reserves (two to three miles). Because of shale’s low permeability, which prevents oil and gas from flowing from the rock, fracturing is required to release the pressure of overlying and surrounding rocks. The NIC report says “producers have long known shale as ‘source rock’ – a

cenSEI Report

• July 15-28, 2013

New Ways to Extract Energy Come with Big Benefits and Big Risks

Where are greenhouse gases coming from? According to the EIA’s graph below, the burning of fossil fuels for energy generation (26% of 2004 global greenhouse gas emissions) that would create heat and electricity is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is followed by greenhouse gases emitted from industry (19% of 2004 global greenhouse gas emissions); land use, land-use change, and forestry (17% of 2004 global greenhouse gas emissions); agriculture (14% of 2004 global greenhouse gas emissions) mostly from the management of agricultural soil, livestock, rice production, and biomass burning; transportation (13% of 2004 global greenhouse gas emissions); commercial and residential buildings (8% of 2004 global greenhouse gas emissions); and waste and waste water (3% of 2004 global greenhouse gas emissions).

rock from which oil and natural gas slowly migrated into traditional reservoirs over millions of years.”

Meet the world’s new energy giants, courtesy of shale gas. According to the U.S.

EIA report on “World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States,” of 32 countries assessed, China, the U.S., and Argentina are the countries with highest “technically recoverable shale gas resources.” China has recoverable deposits of 1,275 trillion cubic feet; the US has 862 trillion cubic feet; while and Argentina has 774 trillion cubic feet. The combined shale gas reserves in the 32 countries plus the U.S.’

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GLOBAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY SOURCES Waste and wastewater 3% Forestry 17%

out of fossil fuels. The reserves are drying out, and so mankind should develop sustainable and cost-competitive ways of extracting energy from renewable energy sources.

Energy supply 26%

Agriculture 14% Transport 13%

Apart from the looming depletion of fossil fuels, Industry 19% the practice of fracking is Residential & Commercial not without controversy, as discussed in this April 2012 think piece on the Graph from Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change’s “IPCC Greentech Media site. Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007” While unconventional oil and shale gas recovery has revived U.S. energy production, controversy still surrounds the safety own reserves come up to a total of 6,622 trillion and proper disposal or treatment of fracking water. cubic feet. (See the complete list of 32 countries and the technically recoverable shale gas resources in Impact of burning fossil fuels. Where there is their basins here.) fossil fuel, there are the greenhouse gases. Studies But in the not so distant future, planet Earth will reach its limit as far as extracting fossil fuels to provide the energy for running its factories, offices, and houses. A disturbing graph from Rocky Mountain Institute indicates that Earth’s fossil fuel reserves will dry up by 2200. That might seem a long way off, but the graph still sends a remarkable message: Aside from the ill effects of greenhouse gases that burning fossil fuel creates, mankind is also facing the frightening prospect of running

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suggest that fossil fuel dependence results in negative impacts on the environment and human health. According to Pacific Environment, the burning of fossil fuels produces heat-trapping gases or greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide (CO2); methane (CH4); nitrous oxide (N2O); and fluorinated gases), which are the main causes of the ongoing rise in global atmospheric temperatures. The EIA says these greenhouse gases act like a blanket around the earth, trapping energy in the atmosphere

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and causing it to warm. This phenomenon is called the greenhouse gas effect and is natural and necessary to support the earth. However, according to the EIA, the buildup of greenhouse gases can change Earth’s climate and result in dangerous effects to human health and welfare and to ecosystems.

The danger of continuing dependence on fossil fuels. The ADB report makes a clear

statement about the impact of energy generation and production to the environment. It says that expanding the region’s (Asia) primary energy mix as currently projected would have serious consequences for the environment, both in Asia and globally. “Local air and water quality, water availability, land use, and global climate all stand to suffer greatly if projected energy demand is met mostly by fossil fuels,” the ADB report says. According to the ADB report, sulfur dioxide emissions have grown in Asia, even per capita. The report states that sulfur dioxide is responsible for the damage acid rain does to lakes and forests, and it poses serious human health risks. “PM10 [Particulate Matter] is an especially problematic air pollutant, its inhalation strongly associated with heart and chronic lung disease. Roughly half of PM10 pollution comes from power plants, 30% from transportation, and most of the remainder from wildfires and dust storms,” the report states. According to the report, air pollution is projected to cause more than 3.6 million deaths per year by 2030 throughout the region, mostly in the PRC and India.

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this value is effectively included within our estimated potential economic impact for mobile Internet New technology (see Chapter 1), and therefore weBig do Benefits not include Ways to Extract Energy Come with and Big Risks it here.

POTENTIAL IMPACT OF IMPROVED ENERGY STORAGE BY APPLICATION

How to enhance energy efficiency with better power storage

Rising global temperatures due to greenhouse gases, human activity. Rising

temperatures resulting in changes in weather, sea levels, and use patterns – commonly referred to as climate change – is the result of greenhouse gases being trapped in the atmosphere, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) states that there is a global consensus that the global climate is changing and that human activity contributes significantly. Hence, for Asians living in hazard areas, get set for even more of the same agonies year after year as global temperatures inexorably rise. The WMO’s “A summary of current climate change findings and figures,” released in March, 2013, states that atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change continue to rise. According to the report, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2011 (2012 data will be available later in 2013). The WMO also reports that trends in extreme events are consistent with the expected impacts of climate change. It says that the first 12 years of the 21st century have seen record temperatures, Arctic ice melt, exceptional heat waves in Western Europe (2003) and Russia (2010), the most costly ever Atlantic hurricane (Katrina in 2005), and major floods in many parts of the world, including Pakistan in 2010, which affected more than twenty million people. Many other extremes were also experienced elsewhere in the world. Early 2013 was marked by extreme heat in Australia and drought in Brazil and the United States.

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Exhibit 10 Sized applications of energy storage could have economic impact of $90 billion to $635 billion per year in 2025, including consumer surplus Sized applications

In its chapter on energy storage, the McKinsey report “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy” figures that improvements in energy storage could help bring electricity to remote areas and boost the efficiency and quality of the electric grid while bringing down carbondioxide emissions. The report estimates that the potential economic impact of improved energy storage could be anywhere from $90 billion to $635 billion a year by 2025, but also qualifies that more than half the impact could come from adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles. Nonetheless, it posits that distributed energy – through the use of batteries in areas where wiring is not available or electrical supply is unreliable – could transform the lives of over one billion people who currently have no electricity, even if the direct economic impact might still be small, relative to the predicted economic impact of improved vehicle batteries. (See accompanying chart) The report also discusses the possible uses for improved energy storage in utilities’ power management, helping utilities generate extra electricity for times of low demand and augmenting capacity in times of high demand, instead of having to add new capacity all the time. According to the report, improved energy storage systems – i.e., pumped hydro-electric storage, compressed air-energy storage, and other non-battery technologies -- play an important role in integrating alternatives to fossil fuels into the energy mix, and can improve the reliability of the electricity supply, and bring electricity to new users.

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Potential economic impact of sized applications in 2025 $ billion, annually

Estimated scope in 2025

Estimated potential reach in 2025

Potential productivity or value gains in 2025

115 million passenger vehicles sold Over 1 billion vehicles in the market

40–100% of vehicles sold in 2025 could be electric or hybrid

13,000 TWh electricity consumption in emerging markets 2–70 hours per month without electricity

35–55% adoption with solar and battery combination 35–55% of companies in Africa, Middle East, and South Asia own diesel generators

60–65% rural electrification rate 1.2 billion people without electricity access 60 KWh monthly electricity requirement of average household

50–55% adoption based on number of people projected to earn above $2 per day

$0.20–0.60 per KWh value per household for direct lighting, TV, and radio benefits

27,000–31,000 TWh global electricity consumption 1.5% electricity production reserved for frequency regulation 2.5% additional reserved for renewable integration

100% technology adoption, more efficient, and cost competitive with incumbent solutions

$30 per MWh weighted average frequencyregulation price

12% of total electricity production possible to shift 850 million tons additional CO2 release

10–20% adoption of energy storage, given costs compared with combined cycle gas turbines

$65–80 per MWh between nonrenewable peak and base load $45–65 per MWh between peak and average wind price $30–45 per MWh between peak and average solar price

Electric and hybrid vehicles

Distributed energy

Stabilizing electricity access

ƒ 20– 415

25– 100

ƒ ƒ

Electrifying new areas

0– 50

ƒ ƒ

Utility grid

Frequency regulation

25– 35

Peak load shifting

10– 25

ƒ ƒ

Infrastructure deferral

~10

Other potential applications (not sized)

ƒ ƒ

ƒ Sum of sized potential economic impacts

90– 635

$295 billion per year investment in infrastructure T&D deferral 10% spent to reduce congestion

15% adoption based on share of transmission lines economical for energy storage

Fuel price: $2.80– 7.60 per gallon 0.22 KWh per mile fuel efficiency for EVs $0.75–2.10 per KWh value of uninterrupted power supply to an enterprise $0.20–0.60 per KWh value per household

Possible deferral of infrastructure investment by 2.5 years

NOTE: Estimates of potential economic impact are for some applications only and are not comprehensive estimates of total potential impact. Estimates include consumer surplus and cannot be related to potential company revenue, market size, or GDP impact. We do not size possible surplus shifts among companies and industries, or between companies and consumers. These estimates are not risk- or probability-adjusted. Numbers may not sum due to rounding. SOURCE: McKinsey Global Institute analysis

Chart from McKinsey Global Institute, “Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy,” May, 2013, Chapter 8, “Energy Storage,” p. 98.

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what’s hot/what’s cool

H O T

New Ways to Extract Energy Come with Big Benefits and Big Risks

annual GDP coping with climate refugees, altered disease vectors, and failing crops. Bangladesh, where 15% of the population lives within 1 meter of sea level at high tide, is prone to flooding, tropical cyclones, and storm surges—not to mention drought. In Cambodia, substantial human and crop losses are attributed to worsening drought and flooding that are likely preludes to more extreme weather.

Per the ADB report, Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), the Philippines, the Mekong Delta, central Thailand, and Sumatra and Java in Indonesia are more at risk than wealthier countries such as Brunei Darussalam and Singapore. China and India could use up anywhere from 1% to 12% of their

It also reported that, according to the study, deaths from extreme events totaled 370,000 people, up 20% from the previous decade, even as world population increased from 5.3 billion in 1990 to 6.9 billion in 2010. The major extreme climate events contributing to the heavy toll included a 2003 heat wave in Europe that claimed 66,000 lives, and a 2010 heat wave in Russia that claimed another 55,000 lives. So while it’s tempting to say, of course it’s hot, it’s summertime, just keep in mind, it’s not just the time of year, the planet really is getting warmer.

Instant slushies made easy. In keeping with the theme of summertime, The Huffington Post, in this July dispatch, leads us to something very cool, both figuratively and literally: an instructional video by Grant Thompson, the self-styled King of Random, on how to make instant slushies from any bottle or can of soda. To try to explain here how it’s done might spoil the fun of accessing the video, and we certainly don’t want to do that, so soda-lovers of the world, prepare to be enlightened (maybe even awed) by the lesson that awaits you.

Disruptive technology, per its description, has the capacity to disrupt how people work and how we interact with each other and our environment, but nowhere does “disruptive technology” live up to its description better than in the field of energy development, where technologies employed to feed our growing need for energy could also disrupt the planet’s continuing existence. The need and the ability to recover more energy must still meet the need to protect the alreadyfragile environment the world finds itself in.

Citing the study, Reuters reported that every year of that decade, except for 2008, was among the 10 warmest since records started being kept in the 1850s, with 2010 the hottest at the time. The world suffered unprecedented climate extremes in that decade, the study found, from heat waves in Europe and droughts in Australia to floods in Pakistan, along with Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2002, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, droughts in the Amazon basin, Australia, and East Africa, and the retreat of Arctic sea ice.

In Asia, according to the ADB report, the rise in carbon dioxide would have a very serious consequences for many countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Citing the IPCC, the ADB states that “geography, climatology, low per capita income, and patterns of urbanization put Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam at risk of losing 6.7% of their combined GDP by 2100 if temperatures change.” The said figure is more than twice the global average of losses linked to climate change, the ADB report states.

planet is hot, or perhaps more to the point, the planet is continuing to get warmer, and not just because it’s summertime above the equator. According to this July 3 Reuters report, which says that, according to a study by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization, the world suffered unprecedented climate extremes in the first decade of the 21st century.

paper on tropical cyclones, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorologist Kerry Emanuel has warned that based on projected emissions of greenhouse gases, models point to “an increase in global tropical cyclone activity, most evident in the North Paciﬁc region but also noticeable in the North Atlantic and South Indian Oceans. In these regions, both the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones are projected to increase.”

Summertime and the living is going to get harder. Quite literally, the

Get ready for more tropical cyclones. In her

The world’s best sand and surf destinations.

Precisely because it’s summertime, some sites have provided us with their takes on where to make the most of the season. Business Insider provides us with its list of “35 Beaches You Should Visit In Your Lifetime,” complete with a slide-show presentation that should suit most viewers, whether you’re looking for a beach to hit, or just looking for nice photos precisely because you know you can’t actually go to any of these places. Meanwhile, National Geographic provides its own guide to the “World’s Best 20 Surf Towns,” with brief travel guides – when to go, where to stay, where to eat, what to play -- linked to each town. Our only misgiving with the presentation is that while there’s a thumbnail presentation of photos along with the travel information, there doesn’t seem to be a way to present the thumbnails in larger format.

Image credit: Grant Thompson and Huffington Post Image credit: Gerald Haenel and National Geographic

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body lab

Whose life is it anyway? From a concept that appears to be close to becoming reality, we move to a concept still on the drawing board, but which opens the imagination to its stilloutlandish possibilities. A July 1 dispatch in Quartz reports on the just-published paper by an Italian neurosurgeon who contends that with recent advances in reconnecting surgically severed spinal cords, the greatest technical hurdle to a head transplant can now be overcome. The paper published in Surgical Neurology International by Dr. Sergio Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, provides an outline for the HEAVEN (HEad Anastomosis Venture) project, the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage (project GEMINI). As summarized in the Quartz dispatch, the procedure would involves cooling the head for transplant to between 12 and 15 degrees Celsius, followed by simultaneous removal of the heads of both patients (with ultra-sharp knives), followed by reconnection of the head to be preserved to the circulatory system of the donor body -- in which total cardiac arrest will have been induced -- within one hour. Once the head is reconnected, the heart of the donor body can be restarted, and surgeons can re-connect the other vital systems, including the spinal cord.

Photo credit: Jake Evill and CNET

The plaster cast blaster. While much attention

has been devoted to 3D printing’s potential to transform traditional manufacturing, additive printing appears to have found a ready if nascent niche in generating replacement parts for the repair or outright replacement of body parts (airway splint, ears, even skulls). Now, blog entries in CNET and The Verge discuss one more 3D-printing application for regenerative medicine: the custom-generated flexible cast replacing the age-old plaster cast for bone fractures. The Cortex exoskeleton cast, developed by Jake Evill, graduate of New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington, would involve developing and printing an individualized nylon cast from an x-ray and a 3D scan of the fractured limb. The lightweight cast would be ventilated -- welcome news to anyone who’s ever had an itch to scratch that was enclosed in a plaster cast (which is to say everyone who’s ever had to wear a plaster cast) -- but with extra reinforced membrane support around the area of the fracture. Apart from its scratch-ability, the ventilated cast would allow for showering.

Possible benefits for selected categories of patients aside, the dispatch also reminds us that apart from the stillenormous technical challenges involved in such a procedure, cost would be a potential barrier, with Dr. Canavero estimating the cost of such a procedure to be at least 10 million Euros (US$13 million). The dispatch also provided a link to one scientist’s reactions to a similar type of operation performed on a pair of monkeys by Dr. Robert J. White in 1970, where the transplanted head survived in the donor body reportedly for eight days.

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The Cortex remains a concept right now, but given its relative simplicity and the promised benefits, quite apart from how the medical world already appears to have taken to 3D printing, as the CNET blog entry reminds us, it might be just a matter of time before concept becomes reality.

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